REPORT RANKS L.A AMONG CITIES WITH TEEN-AGE `SUPERPREDATORS'.

Byline: Lori Montgomery Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Most of the homicidal teen-age ``superpredators'' supposedly stalking the streets of America in fact live in just six states - a third of them in four big cities.

Despite widespread fear and calls for government action to stem a decade-long upsurge in teen-age murders, 80 percent of the counties in the United States didn't count a single homicide by a juvenile in 1994.

Those are among the findings of a national study released Tuesday that challenges broadly held assumptions about lethal violence among America's young people.

The study found that 30 percent of juvenile killers live in isolated neighborhoods of Detroit, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. It also attacked politicians for promoting broad-brush solutions instead of focusing on critical problems in those specific urban areas.

``The problem looks very different than one might expect, given what's being proposed as a solution,'' said Eric Lotke, a research associate at the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives and one of the report's authors. The study's authors advocate alternatives to incarceration in dealing with juvenile crime.

``These four cities have eight times the juvenile homicide arrest rate as the entire rest of the nation. Even the other big cities don't nearly measure up,'' Lotke said.

``Detroit, for example, has 200 juvenile homicide arrests. Dallas has 38. But Dallas is a bigger city. There's something going on in certain locations.''

Not surprisingly, the six states that recorded the most arrests, according to the report - Michigan, California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois - are the states with the most people.

The author of a Republican crime bill, Florida Rep. Bill McCollum, dismissed the report as incomplete and unrealistic. By focusing on murder, he said, the report misses an array of other violent crimes committed by children, including aggravated assault, rape and armed robbery.

McCollum said he held six hearings on the issue and heard from witnesses representing 45 states. ``And I didn't find a single state attorney general who said we don't have a problem with juvenile justice here,'' he said.

Tuesday's study was jointly produced by Lotke's group and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, both nonprofit organizations that promote alternatives to prison. Their findings are based on federal crime statistics.

``It is unwise to take these four cities and somehow use them to set policy for the entire country,'' said Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents parts of Los Angeles. ``We need to focus our resources where the problems are . . . instead of trying to solve problems where there are none.''